Director's Page, Fall 2003

I have spent many sleepless nights wondering how we are going to deal with the relentless anti-environmental policies of this new administration. Let’s face it, our worst nightmares have come true, what with big greedy corporations unleashed to exploit the environment, a resurrected “timber beast” poised to run wild again in the national forests, and with crippled, under funded watchdog agencies and nonprofits in total disarray and confusion standing idly by, we are up the creek. One need only gaze into the cold calculating eyes of the likes of Dick Cheney our shadowy V. P., or the “Darth Vader” Undersecretary of Agriculture, Mark Rey, a former timber industry lobbyist who now controls the Forest Service, to understand the challenge we face. I’m afraid it’s time for some new tactics.

I have given the options some deep thought. Appeals won’t work; the Bush administration has emasculated all the laws that allow us to participate in natural resource management and planning. Law suits won’t work—the Bush administration is packing the courts. What’s left?

Then it came to me, a gestalt from the environmental gods. We are going to have to get really radical. No, not the standard tree-sitting kind of direct action. John Ashcroft would have us nabbed in a flash and executed as terrorists. I am talking about something they will never suspect, a real out-of-left-field sneak attack! How about a curse.

I began my quest for a curse by consulting the most famous of all curses found in the literature of my library. After rejecting the poisoned apple from “Snow White” for being too mild for such formidable opponents, I settled on that masterwork of curses, the witch’s brew of “MacBeth,” as the perfect prototype.

Chills of delight went up my spine as I read the passage from “MacBeth,” Act IV:

A cavern. In the middle, a boiling cauldron. Thunder. Enter the three Witches.

Thrice the brindled cat hath mew’d. Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined. Harpier cries, “’ Tis time, ‘tis time.”

Round about the cauldron go; In the poison entrails throw. Toad, that under cold stone Days and nights has thirty-one Swelter’d venom sleeping got, Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.

Double, double, toil and trouble, Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Fillet of fenny snake, In the cauldron boil and bake; Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog, Adder’s fork and blind worm’s sting, Lizard’s leg and howlet’s wing, For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

Double, double, toil and trouble, Fire Burn and cauldron bubble.

Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf, Witch’s mummy, maw and gulf Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark, Root of hemlock digg’d i’ the dark, Liver of blasphemed Jew, Gall of goat and slips of yew Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse, Nose of Turk and tartar’s lips, Finger of a birth-strangled babe Ditch-delivered by a drab, Make a gruel thick and slab. Add thereto a tiger’s chawdron.

Double, double, toil and trouble, Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Cool it with a baboon’s blood, Then the charm is firm and good.

Now, where to get all this stuff? I made a list of what and where to get the items for the curse (below), divided it up, and sent each member of the staff out to get their share of items.

Check List:

• Fenny snake (fillet) - Eric
• Newt (eye) - Jasmine
• Frog (toe) - Jasmine
• Witch (mummy) - eBay
• Bat (wool) - Eric
• Turk (nose) - eBay
• Dog (tongue) - Eric
• Baboon (blood) - Eric
• Adder (fork) - Eric
• Lizard (leg) - Jasmine
• Blind worm (stinger) - Eric
• Tartar (sauce) - Buzz
• Hooter’s (wings) - Buzz
• Jew (liver) - eBay
• Toad (poison’d entrails) - Jasmine
• Dragon (scale) - Fran
• Goat (gallbladder) - Eric
• Babe (finger) - eBay
• Shark (maw and gulf) - S.C Coastal Conservation League
• Hemlock (water hemlock, Conium maculatum) - Buzz
• Wolf (tooth) - U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service
• Yew (slip) - Oregon Natural Resources Council
• Tiger (entrails) - U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service
• Cauldron, wood, matches and spoon.

In no time I had all of the ingredients. Some of the stuff we got either as road kill or from the local slaughter house. The wolf’s tooth and tiger parts came from a friend at the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Low and behold, the same species of water hemlock that grows on the Chattooga is very similar and just as deadly as the one that was used for poison in Shakespeare’s time. We bartered with friends in other parts of the country for the shark maw and yew branches. But frankly, most of it came from eBay. Who would have thought that stuff like Turk’s noses and witch mummies are fairly popular with the Gen-X crowd.

Gathering a lizard’s leg for the cursed brew.

The cooking part was tough, but after a few hours the evil brew was looking good. The only really tricky part was dealing with the Rabun County cops that showed up unexpectedly that evening. They must have assumed they had discovered a backyard moonshine still. A finger rising slowly up from the bubbling gruel as in the movie Deliverance, right in the middle of being interrogated by the cops, might just provoke some hard-to-explain questions. So I quickly explained that it was for tomorrow’s BBQ contest at Mountain City, and they left.

Once the baboon’s blood was in and the foul brew was “firm and good,” the question arose with the staff as to the method of delivery. “I have an idea,” I said. “Let’s try it out on the local Forest Service staff first, to see if it works.” Having been a former Forest Service employee and having an intimate knowledge of the enemy, the method of delivery came immediately to mind. I explained that the commonly held notion that the noble “Forest Rangers,” like the ones in the old “Lassie” TV series, still roaming the forest looking for lost kids and damsels in distress, was a relic of a past era.

“Listen guys,” I said. “This will be cake. We’ll wait for these pudgy little paper-pushers to take a coffee break during an open house or some such ‘dog and pony show’ meeting, and we’ll slip the brew into the coffee pot. Maybe pour some over the top of all those stale donuts they always try to pawn off on us as refreshments, and bingo, those greedy greenies will think it’s a new sugar treat and they’ll snarf ‘em down like starved hound dogs.”

Sure enough. In a few days a scoping notice came from the local Forest Service office with a proposal to level a few hundred acres of national forest. It seems some land grant college professor had just come out with new evidence that because of a combination of bad forest practices from days gone by (pine plantations and fire suppression), that all the national forests in the Chattooga River watershed were all messed up, and he had determined that in order to regenerate a healthy forest we really needed to start all over from scratch. They informed us in the notice that this insignificant action was “categorically excluded” from public comment, but if we wanted to get educated by the professionals managing the national forest we could come on down to the district office and “view” the maps and so forth. Well this was our chance. They would be under the spell sooner than you could say “glazed donuts.”

The plan worked like a charm (no pun intended). Those witless Forest Service Freddies woofed those donuts down like a pig with a tape worm. We would have them under our spell in no time.

The next day, with curiosity getting the best of me, I couldn’t help myself. I rode down to the district office and there they all were busy as usual working away behind their little computers planning away on more timber sales, road pavings, and herbicide projects.

Dejected, I went back to the Conservancy office to query the staff to figure out what went wrong.

“Let’s all double check our list,” I said impatiently. “Are you sure that you got all the stuff right on your list?” Everyone checked out clean. Then the staff turned the inquisition back to me…. “Fairly sure,” I replied sheepishly, “but I never understood how they knew about tartar sauce and Hooter’s wings in Shakespeare’s day.”

“That was Tartar’s lips and howlet’s wings, you idiot!” Eric howled.

Now, with the pain of complete failure and one hell of a mess to clean up, I guess it’s back to the drawing board. Any ideas out there?